We were excited to break out our very own Dogfish Head Randall at last night’s sold out Meet The Brewer: Dogfish Head. We tapped a 2011 keg of Black & Blue and stuffed Randall full of blackberries and blueberries. This brought a fragrant and rich flavor to a beer that we aged for 10 months allowing some of the alcohol notes to mellow and the fruit flavors to mature. The result was a fantastic glass with the best of both worlds… great aroma and flavor from a beer that’s gotten better with age.

So you’re still saying, What’s this Randall thing again… well, here’s some snippets from Dogfish Head Craft Brewery on Randall…

The strange, but true story of Randall The Enamel Animal

Randall, a true Dogfish Head invention, is an organoleptic hop transducer module. What’s that you say? A double-chamber filter that you connect to a tap of your favorite beer and fill with flavor-enhancing ingredients.

From Sam Calagione, Dogfish Head founder: “I’m really excited to announce Randall 3.0. This is the new double barrel, foam-reducing model. Randall the Enamel Animal is the original gangster organoleptic hop transducing module. Basically, it’s a sophisticated filter system that allows the user to run draft beer through a chamber of whole leaf hops, spices, herbs, fruit, etc. so that the alcohol in the beer strips the flavor from whatever you add and puts it in the beer.”

We first developed Randall back around 2002 to beat our West Coast brethren in a hop-centric beer showdown called The Lupulin Slam. We thought we’d just build that one and that would be the end of it, but right out of the gates fellow beer geeks and brewers asked us to build Randalls for them — so we did.